Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism

Historian Hunting (Edward Durell Stone) and Vanderbilt University architecture professor Murphy (The Cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris) team up for a valuable survey of modernist women architects. Many of the subjects attended the Cambridge School for Architecture and Landscape Architecture from 1915 to 1942, where they were guided away from the reigning Beaux Arts style, and toward modernist architecture (some traveled to Europe and Mexico to see modernist buildings firsthand). According to the authors, the women embraced the basic elements of modernist design—functionality, simple geometric forms, minimum decoration, open interiors—while prioritizing “human needs” over the “abstract modern principles” championed by most male architects. Among those spotlighted are well-known architects like Harlem-born Norma Merrick Sklarek, who ascended to become the director of architecture at Victor Gruen Associates in Los Angeles, and others who parlayed their skills into adjacent carers, including Ernestine Marie Fantl, who worked as a curator of what is now the Department of Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art; and Elisabeth Coit, who advocated for low-cost housing. Interspersed with ample photos and sketches (Eleanor Raymond’s buildings; Amaza Lee Meredith’s plans for a Black residential community), this is a comprehensive and welcome revival of a lesser-known chapter in the history of architecture. Photos. (Feb.)